LingPoet: Journal of Linguistics and Literary Research Vol. 4, No. 1, 2023 | 1 – 10
LingPoet: Journal of Linguistics and Literary Research
Visual Representation of TV Commercials
Agung Farid Agustian
1*, Nurul Syamsiah
2, Zahra Zahira
3,and Rifpan Putra Afriansyah
41,2,3,4 STBA Yapari ABA Bandung, Bandung, Indonesia
Abstract. The study focuses on visual meaning in commercial videos advertisement. The qualitative method is used as the research method in this research with a multimodal discourse analysis approach. Ideational meanings represent the commercial video's visual meaning. It was realized through participants, processes, and circumstances about differences, the easiness of life, and staying strong in difficult times. The representational meanings of the commercial videos were realized through the conceptual process. It symbolically represented the people's differences and needs.
Visual representation implies how the product is a better choice for its customers. While in the end, the narrative process depicts actors and their environment as their goal to create representational meaning from the visual elements.
Keyword: Advertisement, Multimodal, Visual Meaning
Received [31 Dec 2022 | Revised [19 Jan 2023] | Accepted [20 Jan 2023]
1 Introduction
Multimodal discourse analysis focuses on the multiple modes of communication that create a subtle or direct meaning. This study refers to the approach that pays attention to the multimodality of a communication medium. Anything that utilizes more than one mode of communication in a medium can be considered to have a multimodality element in it.
Multimodality defines meaning and representation more than traditional languages, such as verbal communication and text. It pays attention to the meaning and representation of other communication modes, such as the visual mode of images, gestures, gaze, posture, color, typography, or composition [1].
Multimodality can identify discourse from a systemic functional linguistic perspective, such as ideational, interpersonal, and textual meaning. The ideational meaning is delivered through a linguistic source like text. [2] claims that ideational meaning is the text idea.
*Corresponding author at:STBA Yapari ABA Bandung, Bandung, Indonesia E-mail address: [email protected]
Copyright © 2023 Published by Talenta Publisher, ISSN: 2745-8296 Journal Homepage: http://talenta.usu.ac.id/lingpoet
2 Visualizing the commercial, such as the object and environment, is given representational meaning. Representational meaning is the meaning realized visually in how the image conveys aspects of the real world. There are also interpersonal and modal meanings.
Interpersonal describes the relation between participants within a multimodal medium, while the modal meaning is how the image engages with the viewers. Textual and compositional meanings, in which the textual meaning is how the message is organized. In contrast, the compositional is how the multimodal element of an image delivers the desired effect to the viewers.
Commercial advertising is rich meanings worth discussing; multimodal discourse analysis analyzes the visual components of the advertisement. The research on multimodal focuses on the ad's symbolic, interactive, and compositional meanings. It illustrates how visual components are a huge attraction to the viewers and effectively justify the consumption behaviour by appealing to the cultural and social state. It also sheds some light on raising consumers' awareness by presenting how advertisement producers practice psychological manipulation on the viewers. Previous research on text, and visual analysis came from [3], [4] [5], [6]. Based on the background above, what are the tv commercial's ideational, representational, and textual meaning?.
The terminology in multimodal discourse analysis is often used loosely as concepts and approaches began to evolve in this study. Language and other communication resources combined to create meaning in multimodal phenomena (e.g., print papers, videos, digital images, and three-dimensional objects) are semiotic resources, modes, and modalities.
Multimodal discourse analysis is also known as multimodal analysis, multimodality, multimodal semiotic, and multimodal studies. Multimodal discourse analysis is a study of discourse that extends language study by including other mediums such as images, science, symbolism, gesture, action, music, and sound [7]. Multimodal discourse analysis combines writing, speaking, visualization, sound, music, and other communication elements. It is an approach that focuses on two or more modes combined to create meaning in a multimodal text [8].
Systemic Functional Linguistic theory is involved closely in multimodal discourse analysis developed by Halliday & Matthiessen. It is mainly centered on ideational, interpersonal, and textual meaning [9]. Social semiotics fulfill both an ideational function representing the world around us and an interpersonal function of enacting social interaction as a social relation. All messages aim to deliver a coherent 'world of the text', which refers to textual function as a world in which all text elements cohere internally, and which itself chores with its relevant environment (Kress & Leeuwen, 2006).
3 The three meta-functions in the social semiotic method on the visual grammar were adjusted and renamed in Kress & Leeuwen's method as representational, interactive, and compositional.
The meta-functional experimental (representational) concerns the depiction of experiences and conceptual relationships between people, locations, and objects represented in images. The interactive meta-function deal with the social ties between the creator, the audience, and the depicted object. Further, the compositional refers to how components are organized in an image or text to offer a sense of structural coherence [10].
System Functional Linguistics is focused on realizing the function of language. According to Halliday's framework, there are three meanings or meta-functions in language structure and human communication: ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning, and textual meaning.
Ideational meaning describes a text idea. It explains that ideational meaning is how we represent our experience in the real world. Interpersonal meaning is the relationship between participants.
It is concerned with the interaction that happens between the speakers. It establishes the speaker's role in the speech situation and relationship with others. Its main grammatical systems are mood and modality. Textual meaning concerns the creation of text and how those texts are arranged to make sense of the meaning it is trying to convey. The main textual systems are theme and rhyme.
Figure 1. Halliday's System Functional Linguistics
Visual Grammar [9] suggests language as a social semiotic form. Visual grammar focus on Halliday's three meta-functions in language, which are ideational, interpersonal, and textual meaning. The three meta-functions focus more on the visual aspect of discourse through representational, interactive, and compositional. Each meta-functions realize different meanings that exist within a discourse. The difference between these meta-functions is only within the object of which meaning is conveyed.
Representational meaning explains the represented object and its relation between them in the context of a culture. Representational meaning is how meaning is realized visually in how an image conveys aspects of the real world. Representational meaning is divided into two categories: conceptual representation and narrative representation. Conceptual representation represents participants in their more abstract and non-narrative nature. Conceptual
System Functional Linguistics
Ideational
Interpersonal
Tekstual
4 representation has no relation to narrative representation and requires one of the three structures:
classification, analytical, and symbolic process.
Interactive meaning sees the relation between represented participants and the viewers. Three elements are examined to reveal the interactive meaning of images: gazes, size of the frame, and perspectives. The concept of gaze is called 'demand' and 'offer.' The images are demanded if the represented participants directly look into the viewers' eyes. The demand for images means that the producers want to do something for the viewers. The second element of interactive meaning is the size of the frame or distance. The size of a frame refers to the use of shots, whether extreme close-up, close-up, medium close shot, medium long shot, long shot, and extreme long shot. The choice of distance is also believed to have different social relations between represented participants and viewers. Finally, perspective, as the last element of interactive meaning is, served to show the position in which the viewers are made to see the images.
Perspective deals with the choice of angles. The first angle is called 'high angle,' which is shown as the interactive participants looking down on something implying that they have more power than the represented participants.
Figure 2. Kress and Van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar
Compositional meaning describes representational and interactive elements integration to be meaningful. Compositional meaning relates representational and interactive elements through three systems: information value, salience, and framing. Information value refers to the placement of elements in the images. From the three placements, the compositional meaning of
Visual Grammar Interactive
Compositional Representational
narrative representation
demand
offer
Given/New
Ideal/Real
Center/Margin
5 the images can be defined in three types: 'Given' and 'New' (the information value of left and right), 'Ideal' and 'Real' (the information value of top and bottom), and 'centre' and 'margin.'
2 Method
The research applied the qualitative method. It is a research method that analyzes non-numerical data to understand concepts, opinions, or experiences through a comprehensive observation of an object[11]. By utilizing this method, the researcher can interpret the meaning of visual data.
The approach used multimodal discourse analysis that focused on text and visual meaning. The object of this research is soft-selling coffee commercials from Malaysia. The commercial was aired in Malaysia in August throughout different years by Wonda Coffee and Naga DDB Tribal.
The brand launched thirty to one-minute tv commercials, addressing additional messages from within the commercial videos. Three commercial videos have been chosen for this research:
"WONDA Merdeka 2021: United Colors of WONDA" and "Instant Satisfaction," and taken from youtube. The research analysis attempts to analyze commercial videos' utterances and discourse based on Multimodal Discourse Analysis. The interpretation of this study is based on ideational meaning, representational, conceptual, and narrative representation.
3 Result and Discussion
The commercial video showed people to see and judge others by their colour and said there is more to pay attention to from people rather than just their race while slipping in a suggestion about their coffee at the end of the commercial. The speaker is trying to convince us that no matter how many differences the viewers have as individuals, they will all like the taste of their coffee. The realization was six participants were in the video commercial. They cover senser, carrier, phenomenon, attribute, sayer, and behaver. It is shown that the senser is the most frequent participant, followed by another participant: phenomenon, attribute, sayer, and behaver. Senser is the participant who is, by definition, a conscious being, for only those who are aware and can feel, think, or see. Though, it is possible to consider a non-conscious being as a senser.
The video commercial used carrier to support information as the participant assigns quality in an attributive process into being. The phenomenon used to sense, feel, think, or see. Sayer is used to describing the participants in the same carrier. Sayer and behaver are used to encode a signal, and behaver is the participant considered a conscious being. The mental process is used to persuade the viewers using words that involve the process of thinking, feeling, and perceiving.
The circumstance of place is the most frequent circumstance, followed by circumstances of time and accompaniment, which indicate with whom someone does something.
6 The ideational analysis showed that the commercial video's dominant participant is the senser which involves a conscious being for those who can feel, think, or see. The sensers of the commercial are marked by words: we and that colour. Furthermore, the dominant process of the commercial video is the mental process involving feeling, thinking, and perceiving. The commercial video used words like defined, separated, label, pick, categorize, belong, and judging. The most dominant type of circumstance in the commercial video was the place.
Figure 3. Scene 1 in the Wonda Coffee TV Commercial
Representational meaning in the commercial video symbolically describes the products to the customers. Scene 1, at the beginning of the video, shows a group of women sitting in a room and looking at one of the women's smartphones. The social media icons hovering above their heads indicate that they are looking at her social media. It then shows a woman looking at her phone with a smile and holding the mug with Wonda Coffee product with social media icons and emoji’s over her head. This scene implies that the woman is enjoying her Wonda Coffee product and her time on social media.
Scene 1
7 Figure 4. Scene 2 in the Wonda Coffee TV Commercial
The conceptual representation of each scene of this commercial video appears to be a symbolic process. The commercial video symbolically describes the instant effect of the product t in Scene 1. The narrative representation mainly belongs to the action process. The first scenes were a transactional action process because all participants gave their intention to a phone.
Narrative representation scene 2 indicates that the man is working on multiple tasks simultaneously. The scene then shows the man enjoying the product and reacting faster to the many works that he is doing. It implied that the product could improve productivity. Scene 2 shows us a man working on multiple tasks at his desk. It proves that these scenes can be considered as transactional action processes. The man at the desk plays the role as an actor, while his activities at his desk represent his goal and action.
Figure 5. Scene 3 in the Wonda Coffee TV Commercial Scene 2
Scene 3
8 Scene 3 showed a woman looking at her phone and a dress in a split scene. There is a shopping cart icon around her. It tells us that she gets a lot of likes on social media by posting her picture with the new dress. Scene 4 shows a man trying to assemble furniture from scratch with a troubled look. The commercial video shows a scene where a woman, presumably his wife, gives him the product. The man then looked relieved and happy. It showed that the product could cheer you up in difficult times. Transactional action was demonstrated by the girl looking at her smartphone. The girl acted as the actor, and the dress next to her scene represents her goal. It is implied that the narrative explained the process of the actor setting the objective.
The commercial's ideational meaning included participants, processes, and circumstances to answer. Then the visual element of the commercial video explains the visual data context in the representational meaning. The finding revealed that based on the transitivity analysis, the commercial video's script showed many lines that heavily mark how people differentiate each other just because they are different. It can be proved by seeing each element of the transitivity system: participant, process, and circumstances.
Figure 6. Scene 4 in the Wonda Coffee TV Commercial
The participant was dominated by senser, which involves a conscious being for those who could feel, think, or see. The sensers of the commercial were marked by the following words: we and that color. Since the first commercial video is mainly about diversity, the advertisement's choice of words and repetition seems to attempt to make clear and emphasize those people who judge people from the outside and can think, feel, or see. The dominant process of the commercial video was the mental process. It is explained that the point of the cognitive function is sensing.
It means that the mental process involves feeling, thinking, and perceiving.
The circumstances in the commercial video gave the viewers extra information on diversity, shown by the word inside and outside. The conceptual representation and narrative
Scene 4
9 representation showed representational meaning. The symbolic process realized the conceptual representation of the commercial video. It was depicted by displaying mugs of different colors in different environments. It can be concluded that each mug represents people of other races and personalities. The narrative representation showed mugs as the participants. It symbolizes people using a transactional action process, and the items around the environment act as the goal. It gave us an idea of their relationship with the people represented by the mugs. These scenes reveal the intention of the advertisement to show the goodness of their product no matter how different people's tastes, races, and jobs.
The commercial video conceptual and narrative representation was found to be a symbolic process that realizes the conceptual representation of the commercial video. The meaning within the scenes was shown by the product, which implies instant satisfaction in different aspects of life. It portrays the purpose that their product will improve their activity. The narrative representation of the second commercial video depicts the transitional action process. Each participant's activity in different scenes achieved their goal. The commercial video illustrated each participant appearing cheerful about the product in their activity and seeming boosted after consuming it. I was visually proved that the advertisement told the viewers that their product would be able to give instant effect in what they do.
4 Conclusion
Halliday and Matthiessen's Systemic Functional Linguistic theory and Kress and Leeuwen's Visual Grammar theory explained the ideational and representational meaning of the commercial advertisement. It can be concluded that the commercial ads represented the visual meaning through the ideational meaning of participants, processes, and circumstances. Every three elements of ideational constructs a strong implication of how people judge others by their superficial differences like their race and advertise their product at the end of the video.
The representational meaning was constructed by conceptual and narrative representation.
These representations conveyed the commercial visual narrative meaning. The narrative from the commercial videos illustrates each participant's differences visually. The commercial video's visual purpose proves that each transitivity element strongly suggests how the product is the best. The representational meaning of the commercial video illustrates how each people with different needs react more positively to consume the product.
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